(1) Blackburn notes that in western culture it is commonly assumed that human beings are incapable of acting on any other grounds but self-interest.  Blackburn notes that this conception of human beings has profound implications for the structure of human social institutions and expectations about the behavior of our fellow human.  For example, it implies that people will normally break promises if they detect that it is in their best interest to do so.  This view supports a certain view of the requirements of an ordered and productive society, a very different set of requirements than if we were to conceive of human beings as capable of valuing the welfare of their fellow humans for its own sake. 

(2)  Blackburn discusses the 16th century astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, who, as a result of philosophical reflection on the concept of motion, revolutionized astronomy with his heliocentric conception of the solar system.

Question (1)  "What time is it in Sacramento?" is an empirical question.  Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of time can answer this question by consulting a clock and a world time zone chart. 

Question (2)  "Does time have a beginning or an end?" is a philosophical question.  Any simple answer to it will be perplexing.  For example,  time is what we use to mark the beginnings and ends of processes, so it isn't  clear what it means for time itself to have a beginning or an end.. But since time is what we use to measure  processes, it's not clear what it means to speak of time existing before there were any processes to measure. 

I can not doubt that I have a brother.  I can doubt that my brother is that stud  on the beach.  Therefore, my brother is not the same person as that stud on the beach.

The problem with Descartes' reasoning is that it simply does not follow from the fact that we can doubt something under one description but not doubt it under another, that the things described are distinct.  The example given shows this:  The fact that I can not doubt that I have a brother, but can doubt that my brother is the stud on the beach does not prove that my brother isn't the stud on the beach.  It may simply be that there is something about my brother I don't know, namely that he is studly looking.  More generally, it only shows that if a familiar object is described in terms of properties that we don't know it has,  we won't immediately recognize it as that object. 

So even if it is true that we can doubt our existence as physical entities but not doubt them as mental entities, it doesn't follow that mind and body are distinct substances.

Blackburn claims that this kind of argument is not available to the dualist, because the dualist has only one known case of a body with a mental life: her own.  To generalize from this one case is like arguing that since a certain box has a beetle in it, every other box like it probably has  a beetle in it as well.

The conclusion that Blackburn's remark is meant to support is that Cartesians do not have the resources for ruling out the existence of zombies and mutants.  Blackburn claims this is a flaw in dualism because zombies and mutants (as described in the text) almost probably do not exist.

Student Sample

“If I have a box with a beetle in it, that gives me only very poor grounds for supposing that everyone else with a box has a beetle in it as well.” The above statement is relevant to the great Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s criticism of the “argument by analogy” logic, or the assumption that because one individual experiences consciousness, their own experience can be used as a model for the basis that others must also have consciousness as well.

When considering the subject of Cartesian dualism and the “ghost in the machine,” the above argument is intended to support the conclusion that the mind and body are somehow connected, that the “zombies and mutants”  are extremely unlikely, and therefore the only way forward is to reject Cartesian dualism.

The logic for this conclusion is based on the fact that if one learned about mental events entirely based only on our own experiences (taking the possibility of zombies and mutants seriously), it would not be possible to think in terms of other peoples consciousness at all, which is certainly not the case. The mind/body connection must therefore be conceptualized in some other way than Cartesian dualism.

This argument entails that there is no such thing as a "thought mutant."  Blackburn thinks the logical impossibility of thought mutants should make us more skeptical of the logical possibility of other kinds of mutants and zombies.  It may be that a more complete understanding of how the brain processes our basic sensations will reveal analogous absurdities.

For Schopenhauer this is just an expression of ignorance, and in no significant sense evidence that we are free.    As Blackburn points out, it does not follow from the fact that we are not aware of a cause of X, that we are aware that there is not a cause of X.

Student Sample

        "Consciousness of freedom", as stated by Schopenhauer is identified in the way he compares the man who is getting off work to water.  In his statement, he acknowledges that the man has the conscious awareness that he can now do whatever he wants with his free time.  However, he is not aware that although he has been able to do these things, and may do them at some time; because of his present state, he will not.  The same thing applies to the water, since it is not conscious of what it takes to do otherwise; the water attributes the act of being calm to it's own free will, when it really had no choice at all.  In this regard, our "consciousness of freedom" amounts to little else than our inability to recognize the absence of the true prerequisites of our actions..

        Schopenhauer argues that we are simply unconscious of the presence of past states needed for us to truly do something of free will.  He argues that we are not aware that these things are missing.  So ultimately, although we claim that what we do is completely out of free will, our ignorance fails us from seeing that anything we act upon is not out of free will at all, but a result of available circumstances.  This is evidence that, in fact, that we are not completely free.  According to Schopenhauer's argument, we simply think we are.  We are not free to do what we recognize ourselves as being able to do or having done, because what it takes to do those things are not always in place for us to do them.  Therefore, we take the defaulted route, and call it our own decision.

Blackburn mentions the lifecycle of the lancet fluke in order to motivate the problem of mini-Martians:  Suppose your brain becomes infected with microscopic beings that seize control of your behavior, just as the lancet fluke seizes control of the ant's behavior. Blackburn asks us to imagine that these beings can control our decision making processes so fundamentally that they can make us want to do the very things that they require us to do.  Hence, we are slaves to the mini-Martians even as we feel we are acting freely.

The mini-Martian problem is an objection to compatibilism, the view that free will is compatible with determinism.  According to compatibilism, to say that a person could have done otherwise is just to say that he would have done otherwise if he had chosen differently.  The reason that mini-Martians pose a problem for the compatibilist view is that a person with mini-Martians is free in the compatibilist sense of the term. In other words, it is true of such a person that he would have done otherwise if he had chosen differently.  The problem is that he clearly is not free, since his power of choice is controlled by the mini-Martians.

In support of this view, Blackburn quotes Wittgenstein approvingly.  Wittgenstein is saying that there is nothing offensive about a purely physical picture of human beings.  Given that we accept such a picture, it is offensive to suggest that human beings have no moral worth unless they are inhabited by a mental substance that explains nothing.

Student Answer

The reason why Blackburn says we should think more like Wittgenstein, is because Wittgenstein realizes the beauty of nature and acknowledges the fact that nature is beautiful without a "magical" spark from the ghost in the machine. There are so many instances when people look at the world in such a plain way, and need some type of mysticism or wonder to make it feel special.

Kant argued that Hume's bundle theory could not account for the nature of experience.  Specifically, Hume could not account for the fact that under normal circumstances our perceptions are not just a bundle, but a highly ordered set reflecting a particular point of view.  Kant suggested that the reason we can not observe the self is simply that the self is not the sort of thing that can be observed.  Rather, it is something that must be posited in order to explain how observation from a particular point of view is possible.

Blackburn points out that these options are clear and compelling from the perspective of someone who is contemplating them as future possibilities.  But when viewed from the future itself, i.e, after the scrambling option has taken place, these options are not so clear or compelling.  In support of this, Blackburn asks the reader to imagine that he is the result of a different kind of scrambling operation, one in which two people's brains were scrambled to produce his own.  From this point of view, it is not at all clear that he must be one or the other of these two previous people.  It is easy to accept the possibility that he is a combination of them both.

The design argument is an argument for the existence of God based on the claim that God is the best explanation of the empirical fact that the world exhibits design and order.  This is an empiricist argument, because it proceeds a posteriori from empirical observations to a theory that would explain them.

One reason for doubting this is a strong analogy is that we can corroborate the claim that a watch was designed by tracing it back to the watchmaker.  Watchmakers are the kinds of things that can be seen and touched and their plans are things that we are capable of examining.  No similar procedures are available in seeking the designer of the universe as a whole.

The problem of induction is that it does not follow from the fact that a blown match has gone out on several occasions in the past that it will do so in the future.  Reasoning in this way depends on the assumption that nature is uniform.  Moreover, the uniformity of nature itself can not be demonstrated for the same reason:  We may know that nature has been uniform in the past, but it doesn't follow from this that it will be uniform in the future.

Blackburn's lottery example captures the problem of induction by showing that without having direct knowledge of the mind of God (or the laws of nature) the fact that color of the clear midday sky has been blue every day in known memory is by itself no good reason to believe that it will be blue tomorrow. 

Locke distinguishes between two types of ideas:  primary and secondary.  Primary ideas are those that correspond to reality.  For example, our idea of the shape of an object corresponds to something in the world, i.e., the shape of the actual object.  Secondary ideas do not correspond to anything in reality.  For example, Locke claims that color is a secondary idea.  Objects are not themselves colored.  Rather, color is simply a sensation that arises within us through causal contact with the primary qualities of the object.

Regarding solidity, the problem for Locke is that he seems to be involved in a contradiction. First, he regards the solidity of an object as an indication of it's extension, and extension he regards as a primary quality.  However, the sense of touch seems to have no more power to reveal the true nature of reality than the sense of vision.  So Locke's view should commit him to thinking of solidity as a secondary idea.

The general problem here is that the argument Locke gives for thinking of secondary ideas as having no counterpart in reality applies equally well to primary ideas.  Hence, Locke's way of looking at things seems to collapse into idealism, the view that there is no physical reality at all.